


We Don't Know Where We're Going

by foxtales



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentions of Richard's Accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxtales/pseuds/foxtales
Summary: James thinks.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	We Don't Know Where We're Going

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic for Top Gear in 2008. This has been lovingly combed through by pippinmctaggart, tigg71, and dicorvo. 
> 
> Title is from the Gomez song of the same name.

James cradles his cup of tea as he considers that, in subtle but unmistakable ways, Richard Hammond is no longer Richard Hammond. He’s still exuberant, brash and a bit loud; he still loves speed, supercars, his family and his friends. If you hadn’t known him well before the crash, maybe you’d not notice the changes, but James doesn’t count in that group. He’d been intimately familiar with Richard’s moods and behaviors, his reactions and his tolerance levels. There’s a difference now.

It’s as if Hammond’s wiring has changed, as if the signals that travel through his brain and body have been put on a diversion and gotten lost on a May-like level. James smiles at that, but his amusement quickly disappears because unlike himself, able to ask for directions, there is no way to re-orient Hammond. The Richard he and Jeremy had known before is gone. Instead, they have Hammond’s clone – an exact physical replica. You can’t copy a mind, though; can’t copy instinct or gut emotional reaction.

It takes less to rile Hammond up these days and longer for him to calm down. Before, he might fly off the handle, perhaps bellow a bit, and then stalk off to do whatever it was he did to be able to be in the room with Jeremy again without punching the man in the face. Now, there are simmering emotions – anger, anxiety, fear - that stay just under the surface, even after the initial blow-up, the currents affecting shooting for the rest of the day and sometimes longer.

James watches interviews and hears Richard say time and again that the doctors have told him to watch for personality changes. In typical Hammond fashion, he laughs it off, jokes about not being able to tell. James knows that it’s the people closest to Richard who see the changes Richard himself cannot.

He remembers Richard talking about being furious at TG dog for doing a poo on the rug and then transferring that anger to Mindy when she’d told him he was overreacting. James remembers struggling to keep from reaching out to Richard and putting an awkwardly comforting hand on his shoulder, concerned that would only set off his mate further.

That might be one of the hardest parts, James thinks, because he is not by nature a physically demonstrative man. He’d gotten to a point, though, where he’d felt comfortable enough to sometimes reach out to Richard and Jeremy without the context of the show. He thinks of the uncertain pats on the arm or shoulder he’d started out with; how he’d branched out to playful shoving every once in awhile. His co-presenters had acknowledged his triumph even as they mocked him for it, but it had been understood none the less. Now, he is afraid to touch Richard for fear that it will be taken as coddling or whatever else that re-wired brain might come up with these days.

He feels like he has to walk, talk and think on eggshells and he hasn’t felt that way since he first walked onto the set of Top Gear wondering what the bloody hell he was doing there. It feels like starting from scratch and James hates it. He sighs heavily and drinks the last of his tea. Time to get back to the set. The show must go on, after all.


End file.
